This divergent plate boundary moves apart at a rate of 2 5 cm per year relatively slow for a divergent plate boundary and rises 2 3 km above the ocean floor.
Define a ocean floor rift.
Rift valleys usually form where the earth s lithosphere has become thin through extension associated with plate tectonic processes.
Ocean definition the vast body of salt water that covers almost three fourths of the earth s surface.
Mid ocean ridge definition is an elevated region with a central valley on an ocean floor at the boundary between two diverging tectonic plates where new crust forms from upwelling magma.
Individually ocean ridges are the largest features in ocean basins.
If spreading continues past the incipient stage described above two of the rift arms will open while the third arm stops opening and becomes a failed rift or aulacogen.
Rift valley definition graben.
When she inked in and cross hatched the spaces the topographical profile of the north atlantic was evident with mountains and plains and a very obvious mid ocean rift valley indicating continental drift a horrifying concept for geologists to grasp in 1952.
Stress orientation of its huge neighbor and has adopted the same rift zone orientation from fiske jackson 1972.
Isacks had integrated this notion of seafloor spreading with that of drifting continents and formulated the basis of plate tectonic theory.
The ocean floor is thus pushed at right angles and in opposite directions away from the crests.
The most popular mechanism for this outward movement is sliding along the volcano ocean floor interface which consists of easily deformable sediments e g.
Running over 10 000 miles through the atlantic ocean the mid atlantic ridge is the longest mountain range on the planet.
A long narrow valley lying between two normal geologic faults.
Hess theory was that new seafloor is formed when magma is forced upward toward the surface at a mid ocean ridge.
Oliver and bryan l.
Oceanic ridge continuous submarine mountain chain extending approximately 80 000 km 50 000 miles through all the world s oceans.
By the late 1960s several american investigators among them jack e.